Not as crazy as people say

Jakarta Travel Blog

Supposedly Jakarta is the most dangerous city in SE Asia. Even though it is not a major tourist attraction I was interested to see how it compared to South American cities in terms of "danger".

I only left myself one day to explore the notoriously chaotic capital. Unfortunately the day I was there was the last Monday of the month which apparently meant that absolutely everything that you would ever want to see in the capital was closed. I walked around all day and was a bit disappointed with the lack of chaos. Just a day earlier I met a girl who had lived in India for four months who claimed that Jakarta was crazier than anything she had seen before so my expectation of madness were quite high. I thought it felt quite safe, people were generally friendly, and for the most part things were no more unorganized than they had been elsewhere in Indonesia.

The only place "of interest" that I managed to check out was the biggest mosque in the country. It was big but pretty plane jane looking. Again, nothing like what you can see in Brunei.

Air Asia changed my flight without notifying me so I had to spend an extra night in town and then get back to the airport by 8:00 am. At first they just wanted to give me my money back for the flight and told me to go try a different airline. Without to much negotiating they agreed to put me up in a hotel for the night. Then they said all the hotels close to the airport were booked. In the end they gave me the equivalent of $25 for my troubles and sent me on my way. Surprisingly that was enough for my transport back and forth into town, my hotel, supper, breakfast, and a gift bag of coffee in the airport.